Tuesday, September 27, 2011
"The Fly"
In "The Fly" the Boss is a bit of a weird character. He isn't senile like Old Woodifield but he is peculiar in that he enjoy's killing a fly. While I know that the killing of the fly is symbolic to how he feels about his son's death, it is still cruel to torture the thing like that. Just kill it! However, in class we talked about how the fly symbolizes the moral of Germany after World War One, just continually beat down until it can never recover. The people, especially the soldiers who fought in the trenches have never seen such gruesome things. Also the war was cause by something that the common citizens probably didn't understand so they might not really have understood what they were fighting for. The Boss symbolizes the government of Germany and how they control the people. They keep pushing and pushing until finally something or someone breaks. In the story the things that broke were the fly and the Boss's son. The story also talks about the suffering that the fly went through and this relates to the suffering of Europe throughout the war and afterwards when they were trying to get back on there feet. So while I still think that the Boss is a bit strange, he has his reasons and they have deeper meanings.
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I agree that he should've just hurried up and killed the fly quickly. It was disturbing how he would bring it to the brink of death then watch it narrowly escape, then hurt it some more. I think you are right about it symbolizing morale of Germany after World War I. They were continuously broken down until they could not come back from it. The fly was repeatedly harmed by the boss until it was finally put out of its misery.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you on the boss' character and how he does come off a bit strange, but I think you are right - he does have his reasons for how he deals with things. To me I thought the fly in story represented his son and he represented the war. It is interesting to read your take on it though and I can see your interpretation of it as well.
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